Is Trump the only ‘get out of jail free’ card for Biden?

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Let’s see if I’m right: If Donald Trump and Joe Biden were charged with violating laws resulting from their sloppy handling of classified documents, I think they could possibly end up being cellmates at Club Fed.

I’m tempted to say, “One can only hope” — but that’s wrong, so I’ll resist the temptation.

You may have noticed that liberals spend a lot of time telling us about how the two cases differ. About how Trump is the bigger villain because there’s reason to believe he obstructed the FBI investigation and Biden didn’t. Additionally, the left tells us Trump is so irresponsible that he actually has secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago home, but Biden only has some classified documents in a supposedly secure which office he once used in Washington.

That worked until it didn’t, when the documents turned up not only inside Biden’s home in Wilmington, Del., but also in his garage, next to his Corvette. But don’t worry. “My Corvette is in a locked garage, OK? So, it’s not like they’re sitting on the street,” Biden told a Fox News reporter. Boy, what a relief — the Corvette is safe!

But -and I could get drummed out of the press corps for saying this – is this really a big deal, or are we witnessing the all-too-common faux outrage that is part of our political and media landscape? I mean, does anyone really think that Donald Trump or Joe Biden deliberately stole top secret documents to sell them to the Russians or the Chinese? Is there any indication — any at all — that the documents have, in fact, fallen into the hands of our enemies? No nothing.

But here in the United States of Entertainment, drama needs conflict like cable news anchors need airtime — and because Democrats, Republicans and their allies in the media need drama and conflict to keep their- their viewers, this story is unlikely to leave you immediately.

And since anything is possible, let’s play it. If Trump is impeached and Biden is not, half the country will go crazy. And if Biden is impeached and Trump isn’t, the other half will go crazy. And if they were both indicted, the whole country would go crazy — for different reasons.

But does it make sense to throw the book at the president and/or the person he defeated in 2022? Yes, Donald Trump did a lot of stupid things when it was discovered that he had classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago. But when Trump was the only one in the crosshairs, liberals were in no mood to write it all off as an honest, if sloppy, mistake by the former president.

Last September, on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” when Biden was asked his reaction to a photo showing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, he said, “How could this happen? How could it be irresponsible anyone,” adding, “And it’s just – completely irresponsible.”

Michael Beschloss, the historian, goes further. Upon learning that federal agents may have discovered nuclear-related documents at Mar-a-Lago, he took to Twitter to post a photo of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, with this message: “The Rosenbergs was convicted of passing US nuclear secrets to Moscow, and was executed in June 1953.” That’s it. There was no explanation. But he later told Politico, “I’m not suggesting that Donald Trump be assassinated. I’m making a historic tweet about the most famous case of nuclear secrets in American history.”

All right, Michael, whatever you say.

Now that we’ve learned that Biden has secret material not at a resort but in a garage, I’ve heard more than a few liberals on cable TV say that Biden clearly didn’t hand over the documents in his garage; that some flunky must have brought classified documents to Wilmington; and that it wasn’t Biden’s fault because he didn’t know anything — the Sgt. Schultz of the “Hogan’s Heroes” defense.

I could be wrong, but I think this is the only time Biden’s supporters have said — out loud, anyway — that the president has no idea what’s going on around him. As for Biden himself – who called Trump “irresponsible” – he wants everyone to know that “I take classified documents and classified material very seriously.” I don’t know about you, but I feel better knowing that.

And so, we are left with this question: Can the Justice Department really put Trump on trial and not Biden? Legally, yes. But in politics? If only the DOJ wanted to split the country in two. You know the old saying: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

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Here’s an idea: Let the special counsels finish their investigations of the president and the former president. Let the attorney general, who has the final say on whether or not to prosecute, make the findings public. Tell Donald Trump and Joe Biden they can’t do what they did; that they are not only sloppy but careless. And then call it a day without persecution.

And if the two men run again against each other for the White House in two years, let the court of public opinion, not the court of law, make the final decision on what we should do to them.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.

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